


A Still Life Gone Cinéma Vérité

by cricket_aria



Category: Night In The Woods (Video Game)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Post-Canon, eff bad teachers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:36:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23886076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cricket_aria/pseuds/cricket_aria
Summary: A year in AV class might as well go straight down the drain when you have a teacher who hates genre movies. A good friend can help ease the sting a little.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28
Collections: Minigame: Round 1





	A Still Life Gone Cinéma Vérité

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cadmean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadmean/gifts).



Lori turned the flash drive between her fingers as she sat on the edge of the roof. She’d just bought it that day specifically for what she was up there to do, a cheap piece of junk containing all her hopes and dreams. Her other hand clenched tearing-tight around the paper listing out just how much those turned out to be worth.

With a quiet snarl she threw the drive over the edge, only to be met by a surprised yelp from below.

She froze, knowing only one person would be wandering around on powerlines to be close enough for her to hear. Lori hunched in on herself as she heard springing steps moving away from her then scrambling across the rooftops coming back, knowing there was nowhere she could try to run and hide and pretend that she wasn’t the one accidentally throwing things at her friend. Throwing things when they were in a spot where getting hit by surprise could have made them fall and crack their skulls open for everyone in town to see.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said as the steps got closer, doing her best to pull her head into her jacket like a turtle, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know you were down there.”

“Hey, you’re not hyperventilating when you apologize way too much! Progress!” Mae said cheerily as she dropped to the ledge beside Lori, and sat the drive which should have been crushed under a car tire by then between them. “So, why’re you bombing me? If you’ve been doing crimes and need to hide the evidence there’re, like, cliffs and stuff.”

Lori felt herself flushing at the idea that she could be cool enough to do any crimes worth hiding anything for. Like she wasn’t the girl who hadn’t even managed to actually finish the one bit of vandalism she’d ever done. “It was supposed to be, you know, a statement”

“Yeah? A statement like ‘Watch out Possum Springs, death comes from above!’?” Mae asked, grabbing the drive back up and pulling back her arm as if she was preparing to throw only to keep it clenched in her hand when she whipped her arm forward.

“No,” Lori huffed out the word around a joyless laugh, “More like ‘Dumb girl, this is the only thing your work is worth.’”

“Huh. Yeah, I can see it meaning that too,” Mae agreed. She was the only person Lori knew who would just accept a statement like that sometimes, no going all gooey and sympathetic over ‘Poor thing, it can’t be that bad’ or gruff and dismissive about ‘Ha, you think you have problems at _your_ age?’ Mae just stared at Lori in that slightly too intense way she had, and Lori knew that if she didn’t feel like sharing anymore Mae would just drop it right there and take their conversation off on some rambling tangent.

If she had tried to sympathize Lori might have clammed up. Because she didn’t Lori felt safe saying, “It has a copy of my AV final saved on it.”

“Oh yeah! The lake monster thing?” Mae perked up. She was the only one who’d known much about what the short film was going to be about, since she was also the only one who’d actually asked why Lori had dyed her fur green when she was trying to make it blend in with the seaweed of her costume instead of just assuming it was a teenaged rebellion thing.

“Yeah, that. We got back our grade assessments today.” She handed the paper she was holding to Mae instead of even bothering to try to explain what it said, feeling her breath trying to close off at the thought of even _attempting_ to say more about it. Though her teacher had given her a barely passing grade, Lori was sure he’d only grit his teeth and forced himself to do it because there weren’t many faults that he could find with the actual technical work of her film. The assessment was full of things like ‘juvenile’ and ‘wasting filming time on b-movie schlock’ and ‘you are here to learn how to create cinema, not tasteless pap’. The closest he’d come to a compliment was admitting that her costumes were done well for a no-budget high school film, but even that had been cut with a suggestion that if she wanted to be a costumer she should see about taking a home ec class instead. “I knew he doesn’t like horror, or… or anything that’s not artsy junk,” Lori said, having to gasp increasingly harshly between the words, “He didn’t… didn’t _hide_ it whenever we went over our works for our finals. But I thought if I finished… if he just saw it…” she could barely get enough wind to choke out in one last fierce burst, “I thought he’d at least _be fair._ ”

It was what she’d wanted to say that day in class, when they’d gotten to her critique and it became obvious that he hardly even cared about the quality of her filming or anything else. All that mattered to him was that it was a _genre_ piece, the word spat out like it was garbage on his tongue. Everything in Lori had wanted to protest, even if she knew it wouldn’t do her any good. But she hadn’t been able to say a single word in her defense, because the more she heard the more she had to focus on just forcing herself to breathe normally.

She could make it through high school as a creepy loner whose maybe best friend was an even creepier college drop-out who all their parents had used as the boogie-man figure of what they didn’t want to grow up to be back when they were in middle school. She didn’t know if she could manage it if word got around that she was just a weakling whose body tried to suffocate her to death whenever she got too anxious instead.

Lori had half-expected Mae to just give the sheet a brief glance over before her thoughts skittered off to something more interesting than a teenager’s grades, but she actually seemed to stop and read it seriously, her face falling into a deeper and deeper scowl as she went along until she finally burst out, “Man, _eff_ teachers!”

Lori laughed in surprise. Mae was the only adult she knew who would say something like that to someone her age, instead of acting like all her teachers had to have super important life lessons to pass on.

“Seriously, like, eff them all! He said you could make whatever film you wanted, and you turned in a great movie—”

“You’ve never seen it,” Lori tried to cut in, though she couldn’t help smiling a little as Mae went straight on over her.

“—a _great_ movie, and he gets on your case because it isn’t ten minutes staring at tofu on a black plate!”

“Ten minutes of _what?_ ” Lori asked, smile only growing wider.

“I dunno! Artsy _stuff_. You know! Lori! Lori, Lori,” Mae patted her on her arm, the stare she turned on Lori growing even more eerily intense than usual as she asked, “D’you want me to burn down his classroom?”

Mae said it in the way she had sometimes, where Lori couldn’t tell if she was making a dark joke or a serious offer. Either way helped her feel good, even if maybe it should make her worry instead. “Thanks, Mae, but that’s okay,” she told her shaking her head, “It just sucks. I worked so hard and he dumped all over it, but I still have to take his next stupid class next year because there’s nothing else for video.” 

She didn’t say that if she didn’t take it she’d never be able to get her hands on a camera at all, which would be worse than dealing with the same stuck-up teacher all over again. Lori knew that Mae had laughed off her calling her neighborhood the rich part of town, but even if her family wasn’t _rich_ rich Lori didn’t think that anyone who lived on Maple could get what it was like to be so poor that even a camcorder three owners from new would be too expensive to try asking for, and a phone that could take decent video out of the question.

“I could make the fire when he’s there, new teacher!” and that part definitely sounded more like Mae was only joking, right up until her face suddenly twisted and she bitterly added, “People in this town suck about even noticing, like, deaths right under their feet.”

Lori didn’t know where the sudden twist in Mae’s mood had come from, but she wanted to help ease it the way Mae had helped lighten her own anger and grief. She pulled her knees up under her chin, considering it, than slowly nodded towards the drive still in Mae’s hand. “Hey, you can hold onto that if you want, Killer. Watch what I made when you get home. You could tell me if you think it’s as crummy as he does.” It was a terrifying offer to make, her stomach twisting sickly at letting another person see the cause of her shame, yet somehow in the face of Mae’s staunch defense she was able to make it without her lungs fighting her at all.

“How awesome great I think it is, you mean,” Mae insisted, Lori’s gambit working as whatever troubling thought had grabbed her seemed to pass right on again. “One day you’ll say it got you hired for your first job! Your first job can be making my band a music video. The pay is pizza, and also more pizza. How’s that?”

“You know I don’t have my own camera, right?” Lori asked, even as she could feel that she’d be grinning and grinning at the offer. She’d need to stay up on the roofs for longer than she’d planned until it wore off to make sure nobody from school would see. It would hurt her creepy loner cred.

“Feh, caaaamerrra,” Mae drawled out, waving it off dismissively. “My laptop has a webcam, you can do it with that. Crappy blocky webcam look can be, like, an _aesthetic_ thing when you edit it, right? If Bea’s drums can be a laptop, so can your camera!” She paused for a minute, considering, then added, “Just don’t look in any folders.”

“Okay, okay, if you like my work I’ll make you a webcam music video for pizza. Can there be monsters in it?”

“Aaaallll the monsters! Just monsters us all up, Lori M. Me and Gregg’ll vote yes for sure, and Angus should vote to make Gregg happy, so Bea’ll be outnumbered! Or if Angus doesn’t I can get Germ to be the tie-breaker, he’d go for it too.”

“I don’t know who any of those people are,” Lori told her, then was perfectly happy to sit and listen as Mae yammered on about how great the rest of her band was, and what the best monster for each of them would be.


End file.
